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it be easier to compile new records or to remove the dust and defacement from old ones, but I know by experience that the labour, if conscientiously performed, is, in each case, such as few who have not attempted it can realise. The contradictions to be found in two or more authorities, apparently of equal weight and equal trustworthiness, are often so serious and fundamental as apparently to defy reconciliation or explanation. Sometimes, indeed, two eye-witnesses, watching an operation on board the same ship, have left entirely contradictory accounts both of the sequence and of the issue of the events observed. Nor can statements even in official dispatches, State papers, and Government returns, be always accepted without corroboration. It has been our business to meet and vanquish these and other difficulties to the best of our ability, and we have spared neither time nor pains in searching for the truth. But the mass of material to be consulted is so colossal that errors of omission as well as of commission cannot but abound in a work like the present. I trust, therefore, that the book may not be too harshly judged. Such faults as may be detected in it must, in any event, be attributed least of all to prejudice. We have desired to set down facts without fear or favour, and to draw such conclusions only as are justified by the evidence offered; and it will be a great satisfaction to all of us, even although we may fail to some extent in other respects, if the sincerity of our intentions escape all impeachment.